This is primarily a blog of book reviews. I simply just love reading and I like to record my informal thoughts and reviews on books that I come across. I prefer books with very high stakes so I mostly read crime, noir, and horror/sci-fi, but I enjoy any great story. I'll go for anything as long as it's good!

*Explanation of the Blog Title:
A friend mentioned that there is a stereotype that most black men don't read fiction. Well, I'm here to prove otherwise!

Friday, December 29, 2017

THE SOUND OF BROKEN RIBS by Edward Lorn

I just love a simple story told extremely well. The premise here is simple: a terrible car accident causes the lives of two very different women to tragically intersect, and author Edward Lorn has such a confident grasp of character, theme, pace, and the juggling of multiple viewpoints, that it became one of my most enjoyable reads this year. The characters of Lei Duncan and Belinda Walsh instantly grew familiar to me. I was invested in them from the first few pages and they will stay with me for a while even now that I've finished the book. Belinda Walsh in particular is handled very well; I loved the fact that the way I expected her to act after being introduced to her evolved subtly as I learned more about her character. At first I saw her as this clueless pushover, but by the end, I realized that she's much more aware and sharp than I expected in the beginning.

"But that's how insanity works. When you break, you don't hear the snap."

The reason I didn't rate it higher is because I'm not a fan of the kind of ending found here, which I won't go into detail about. It was a near perfect read for me right up to that point. But it's really a personal preference and many others might love it. I've been learning to judge something based on what it is and what it sets out to do rather than what I want or expect. And what Lorn does here, he does it very well. It was one of the smoothest and quickest reads I've experienced this year.